TV/Movies Megathread

[Syt]

My employer in Germany rebuilt the Buddy Holly musical theater in the Hamburg harbor for the Lion King musical. Never watched it, though.

[celedhring]

I've never watched it, neither when I lived in NY nor when they opened a Spanish production. Every time I looked for theater tickets there were always like a dozen shows at half the price, and that sounded more interesting. But I'm probably not the target audience.

[Ideologue]

All I need for that is to watch a Sidney Lumet film, which should be fun.

And so it was.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975).  Not my favorite Lumet movie I've seen (actually, I guess it's the "worst" ), and there's some hard-to-pin-down slackness to it (to make a somewhat unfair comparison, Inside Man has about four times the plot, yet is something along the lines of ten minutes shorter with credits).  But otherwise, totally great.  (One minor thing: I don't think life insurance policies work that way.)  I'm adding it to my list of New Hollywood films that don't suck--though, as noted with Network, I'm unsure to what extent Lumet is meaningfully New Hollywood.  But I guess a movie about a guy banging a sort-of transsexual probably has less in common with Golden Age sensibilities than modern ones. A

[Ideologue]

Oh, and the lead cop played by Charles Durning did lose his job for gross incompetence, right?

[celedhring]

Have you seen Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, Ide? One of my favorite of his, and he was already in his 80s when he did it!

Lumet is usually listed as part of New Hollywood. Lumet hated the Hollywood system certainly, that's why he based most of his career in NYC even though he wasn't an indie. He was part of the first generation of TV directors that transitioned to film, so he brought a distinct approach to its subjects that was certainly different to the lumbering studio system - quick, dirty and vivid - but at the same time was a bit different from most New Hollywood types. Those usually had a different background, coming from film studies or film schools (Coppola, Bogdanovich, Scorsese, Malick, etc...) and thus had more stylized aesthetic proposals.

[Neil]

AMC is running the Breaking Bad marathon.  Jesse Pinkman is such a flake and a weenie.  Heisenberg should've whacked him in Season 2.

I dunno about that, but he definitely should have let Gus take him out.

I think the idea was that Heisenberg took Jessie under his wing as the potential intellectual successor that he couldn't have (as his natural son was developmentally disable)...and then went overboard on the obsession (letting his GF-who-was-trying-to-split-them die). 

Hell, you could say Jessie was his man-crush love interest in the series...certainly more than his family.

Jesse was someone safe for him to bully.  He knew the limits of Jesse's ambition, so he knew that he could just bitchslap Jesse around, and he would just take it.  Pretty much all of Walter's relationships to other criminals are based on relative power, and Walt's thirst for it.  That's why he couldn't coexist with Fring, and why he had to have Gayle removed and replaced.  His ego couldn't handle Fring being his superior, and Gayle was too clever, learning his secrets and thus taking away what made him special.

He let Jane die because she was a threat to turn him into the cops.

[Josephus]

I had free tickets for the Lion King back during its initial run. I watched the first act, but the Toronto Maple Leafs were involved in a playoff game, so I left after Act 1 to catch the Leafs on TV at a bar.

[Neil]

... and it plays into that old-fashioned prejudice that gay men were automatic security risks.

Bradley Manning says hello.

Gay men ARE security risks.

[KRonn]

I've been watching The Walking Dead since a few months ago. I had never really watched it or cared to check it out much, but once I started watching it I really got into it. So I've been watching repeats of all the previous seasons plus the new shows for probably a few months now. Pretty much caught up in the series, and really liking it.

Same for Breaking Bad, a series which had ended I guess last year. I watched the repeats that were on a marathon showing and really got into that show, and saw at least most of the episodes. 

[CountDeMoney]

Dog Day Afternoon (1975).  Not my favorite Lumet movie I've seen (actually, I guess it's the "worst" ), and there's some hard-to-pin-down slackness to it (to make a somewhat unfair comparison, Inside Man has about four times the plot, yet is something along the lines of ten minutes shorter with credits).  But otherwise, totally great.

Yes, back then films weren't made with today's Millennials and their attention spans shorter than a gnat's lifespan in mind, so it could appear to possess a certain slackness.

[Martinus]

Bruce Le Bruce's "Gerontophilia". Surprisingly good. 

[Martinus]

... and it plays into that old-fashioned prejudice that gay men were automatic security risks.

Bradley Manning says hello.

Gay men ARE security risks.

Since when is Chelsea Manning a gay man?

[Viking]

... and it plays into that old-fashioned prejudice that gay men were automatic security risks.

Bradley Manning says hello.

Gay men ARE security risks.

Since when is Chelsea Manning a gay man?

At some point I've got to refer to the emperor's new cloths here.

[Eddie Teach]

Since when is Chelsea Manning a gay man?

Since either birth or early childhood.

[Neil]

... and it plays into that old-fashioned prejudice that gay men were automatic security risks.

Bradley Manning says hello.

Gay men ARE security risks.

Since when is Chelsea Manning a gay man?

Who the fuck is Chelsea Manning?